, 1887-08-17
SWISS L~ANosLlPs.
The Frequent Destru tIon of villages by
the GigiunIic LandsIfdes.

the GignnIic Landslides.
Many of the Swiss villages exist almost
on sutferance. The avalanche of snow or
the avalanche of earth may at any mo-
ment sweep them away, OF, what is
equally r~uinous, overwhelm them with
the debris of the mountain at the foot of
ar on which they are built. In not a few
instances the landslip is SO slow in its
progress that it is only a question of time
when the final catastrophe will be pre-
cipitated. At Bec Rouge, in the Taran-
taise, for example, the side of the noun
tain is gradually overwhelming the viii
lage of Miroir. In most cases, however,
the calamity is sudden and unexpected.
Such an instance is supplied by the fall
of the Rossberg, a well known mountain
5000 feet high, situated just behind the
better known and loftier Rig. In 1906,
after a very rainy season, a large portion
of the mountain, consisting of beds of
hard sandstone and pudding stone, rest
ing on soft sandy layers, suddenly swept
across the valley of Goldau, burying four
villages, comprising over 300 houses,
nearly 500 inhabitants and more than So
square miles of fertile land. In 1885 a
mass of debris slid into the valley of the
Tiber, which, damned back by the OBJ
struction, overlooked the village. of San
Stefano to the depth of so feet, until the
drowned village was relieved by means
of a hastily constructed canal. Another
example of a disastrous landslip is hat in
which, by the sliding Of a portion of
Monte Como, the entire village of Plurs,
with 2,430 inhabitants, was in 1913 over
whelmed. For several days before the
catastrophe masses of rock had become
detached from the mountain, and numer-
GUS assures were observed to form or
widen on its sides. But the villagers dis
regarded the warnings, and were in u
few minutes buried with all their possess
sions beneath sixty feet of rock and
earth. All attempts to penetrate the
mass proved fruitless, and no trace of
the town has since been seen. The earth
which entombed it is now clothed with a
luxuriant forest of chestnuts, but the
original name still survives in the little
village of Plurs, or Pluro.
1t may almost be said that these catas-
trophies are so frequent that history pre-
serves the memory of only the most dis
astrous. Such a one was that by which
the village of Elm was overwhelmed only
a few years ago. AT that time the place
contained fifty houses and nearly ESQ in
habitants, most of them children and old
people. Nearly nalt oil them were Killed,
while most of the dwelling houses were
altogether crushed OF buried beneath the
debris from that portion of the Teschingel
Alps, which broke away from its parent
mountain. Altogether, though the Elm
catastrophe was, i'll the loss of life and
property, of less magnitude than those
which overlook Plurs and Goldau, it is
doubtful whether it did not, in the amount
of rubbish shot from the mountain side,
surpass both of these gigantic landslides.
The Swiss biologists who visited the spot
Immediately after the disaster calculated
that, at the lowest estimate, the contents
of the slip measures 10, 900, 900 cubic
meters. What a vast amount of material
this pile contains may be grasped by a
simple illustration. Zurich is a city of
70, 900 inhabitants. Yet in the debris shot
from the side of the Tschingel Alp there
was stone enough to build two Zurichs.
Some of the blocks are heaped 300 or 400
feet higher than the village of Elm. One
is estimated to weigh 5000 tons, and as
these gigantic missiles were precipitated
from a height of 1000 feet the irresistible
force with which they fell IN the doomed
villages can easily be imagined.-London
Standard.